MARCOGAZ Activity Report 2012-2013

TECHNICAL ASSOCIATION OF THE EUROPEAN NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY

Gas Infrastructure

The scope of work coversmainly highpressure gas pipelines (transmission systems) and low pressure distribution grids with a strong focus on safety issues and technical harmonisation.

Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP)

MARCOGAZ believes there is some benefit in the European legislation on European Energy Infrastructure Protection, particularly by raising awareness and sharing best practices between infrastructure operators and some National Regulatory Authorities and Member States. The GIE/MARCOGAZ group supports the initiative to recast the Directive and proposes to give more focus on a consistent, qualitative and effective implementation of the existing measures. MARCOGAZ is also participating in the European Commission’s DG Energy “Thematic Network on Critical Infrastructure Protection (TNCEIP)” , addressed to energy operators with the main object of discussing on security aspects in the context of EU policy in this area. Continuity planning and cyber-attacks are becoming more a more important for EC.

Distribution

Main activities dealt by the group in this period have been:

• Update of the Distribution Key Performance Indicators (KPIs); • Finalisation of the Report on Unaccounted For Gas (UFG); • EGAS B 2011 (distribution accident statistics) final report; • Maintenance policies benchmarking.

A detailed analysis has been carried out on the 19 existing KPIs and a 2008-2011 draft report is in preparation.

Third Energy Package

Following the request of the Commission to ACER to submit by 31 st July 2012 a framework guideline to set out the necessary level of harmonization on interoperability rules and data exchange in the EU gas sector, ENTSOG undertook in September 2012 the preparation of a Network Code on Interoperability and Data Exchange.

13 Countries have provided answers for the EGAS B 2011 report which demonstrates the very good overall safety level with an average fatalities frequency of less than 0,5/100.000 km of distribution. Accident due to Third Party Damage are accounting for approximately half of the total.

The last version of the Unaccounted For Gas (UFG) report will be issued for adoption in autumn 2013.

MARCOGAZ was very active in the process by bringing its technical expertise on 3 issues:

DSO Certification is proposed as a new subject for next year. The reason behind is a new tendency from Regulators to ask competences certification to DSOs (e.g. Austria or Germany).

• Harmonisation of units (the draft NC does not use reference conditions prescribed in the relevant CEN and ISO standards); • Odorisation with the circulation to ENTSOG of the MARCOGAZ report onodorisation and interoperability; • Gas quality where MARCOGAZ highlighted the consequence of adopting technical characteristics at interconnection points on end users.

Gas Metering

MARCOGAZ strongly supported the adoption of the 1 st smart meters product standard (EN 16314) prepared by CEN/TC 237, therefore allowing DSOs or Meter Operators to refer to a European standard in their smart metering projects. This is a very good achievement of the Gas Industry.

The Network Code should be adopted during 2 nd half of 2013.

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MARCOGAZ Activity Report 2012 - 2013